The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

								

beyond Pales and everything else, I don't know what does.
That's why this man deserves such extraordinary credit for being
interesting and mysterious. Even if caught in the act of displaying his
tongue to the doctor, I believe you'd say, should you see a snapshot:
"Who is that man?"
Now, haven't I worked up to him well? Don't you want to hear the rest?
Well, so do we. For we don't know anything at all, except that if we
go and gaze over the rail of the first-class part of this old-fashioned
tub of a ship, into the third-class part, we can generally observe a
young man who looks like an Italian prince (I mean, the way an Italian
prince ought to look) telling the steerage children stories or
teaching them games. I'm not sure if he's exactly handsome, but there
must be something remarkable about him, or all the first-class
passengers wouldn't have begun asking each other or the ship's officers
or even the deck stewards on the first day out, the question I
suggested: "Who is that man?"
I believe, by the by, it was a deck steward I asked. I've always found
that they know everything. Or what they don't know they cook up more
excitingly than if bound to dull facts.
I added to the question aforesaid--"Who is that man?"--another: "And
how does he come to be in the steerage?"
It was the second question which got answered first. "I suppose, my
lady"--(Whiffitts will anticipate the far future by calling me "my
lady")--"that all his money was torpedoed."
This explanation raised such a weird picture (can't you see the thing
happening?) that Whiffitts was obliged to begin at the beginning, and
not stop till he came to the end, my eager look a prophesied mine of
half-crowns.
Whiffitts simply loved telling me. It is nice knowing something
somebody else doesn't know and is dying to! The name of the Ship's
Mystery is supposed to be Storm, Peter Storm. I say "supposed,"
advisedly. Because it may be anything. They don't worry with passenger
lists for third-class people; they're just a seething, nameless mass,
apparently. But anything remarkable bubbles up to the top, as in the
case of the alleged Peter Storm. Naturally, his fellow-passengers have
nicknamed him "The Stormy Petrel."
What is he really? we wonder. A jewel shines more brightly at night, and
perhaps it's the contrast between the Stormy Petrel and those
"fellow-passengers" of his which makes him look so very great a
gentleman, despite the fact that his clothes might have been bought at a
second hand--no, a fourth or fifth hand--shop. The creature wears
flannel shirts (he seems, thank heaven, to have several to change with,
of different colours) and they have low, turn-over collars. Apparently
all his neckties were torpedoed with his money, for he never sports one.
Instead, he ties himself up in red or black silk handkerchiefs, very
ancient and faded; and if you will believe me, my dear girl, the effect